Agarwood, which has long been famous as a natural perfume, is formed as a reslt of the resinification of terpenes contained in old trees of Aquillaria agallocha Roxb. growing in India or Southeast Asia by the action of a certain kind of bacteria to give "oriental" odor. Many studies have been made on the scent-providing compounds of agarwood, and the presence of benzylacetone, p-methoxybenzylacetone, hydrocinnamic acid, p-methoxyhydrocinnamic fixed [Kafuku & Ichikawa, Journal of the Japanese Chemical Society, 56, 1155 (1935), Ichikawa & Ye, ibid., 60, 1247 (1939)], agarol (III) [J. C. Jain et al., Tetrahedron Letters, 13 (1959)], agarofuran (IV) [M. L. Maheshwari et al., Tetrahedron, 19, 1079 and 1519 (1963)], and agarospirol (V) [K. R. Varma et al., Tetrahedron, 21, 115 (1965)] has been found.
Recently, the presence of jinkohol (VI), a sesquiterpene alcohol of a prezizane derivative, has been reported [T. Nakanishi et al., Phytochemistry, 20, 7, 1597-1599 (1981)]. ##STR3##